In the Slammer With Carol Smith by Hortense Calisher

‘Betcha the neighbors aren’t organizing any protest.’ He gives her a long look. ‘See you got yourself one of those.’ He flicks the Shelter-Pak. ‘Hmm. Up to you. Anyways, take care.’ He shrugs. ‘Upta you.’ On the way past Mungo’s barrow he seizes a pot, calling back: ‘For the wife.’
    ‘He never respects my inventory,’ Mungo says.
    She says, looking past him, ‘I know who’s in the shed.’
    The bolts are still there, but swing loose on their fittings, as if one of the destroying crew had said at the last minute, ‘Nah, not worth it,’ and had let the shed be. Or else somebody, tripping the set-up of bolts and knocker for one last time, had then wrenched it half out of the weathered wood.
    ‘It’s still a door,’ Mungo says, and pushes in.
    At first she thinks the body there is dead,—shoved up against the wall with its knees sunk to its chin and left there, by the decamping crew. Or by Jerry Guido, who had really gone to meet the squad car. But then one eye opens owlish. Then the other. ‘Don’t come near, whoever you are. ‘I up-chucked. Forgot I was on like an antibuse.’ His voice is tired but still competent, the way it always was, separate from any bottle in his hand. An actor’s voice, no whopper of a baritone, but the thin, dry kind, that tickles one’s ear.
    Both eyes close, open, focus. ‘Carol. Carol.’
    She smiles.
    One scarecrow jerk, then another. He stands. ‘What did you do to yourself?’
    ‘What did you?’
    ‘I said. Fell off the wagon.’ The shapely head hangs. Its haircut is still sharp. ‘After nearly a year.’
    ‘Fell off?’ Mungo cracks. ‘Weigh up, pal. You were never on. Tossed—from one night to the other. Bottle in your britches, dawn to dusk.’
    The long harlequin face lights up. ‘So I managed it then?’
    Mungo’s cheeks puff. ‘Manage?’
    ‘Thought you knew I was playing the fool. An old Aussie like you. You ever sniffed at those bottles, you’d have known it was tea.’ He turned to her. ‘I know I fooled you. I was acting. Acting it out. Like it helped—see?’
    Acting it out—she knows that phrase. That’s what she had done—they said, the docs on the ward. Maybe she’s still doing it? Stage acting is a whale’s distance apart. But she daren’t say. ‘Tea, Alphonse? That’s what they use onstage, isn’t it?’
    He sees what she’s up to. ‘Thanks.’
    ‘I’m a good smeller. You don’t smell as if you barfed.’
    ‘Barfed?’ A college word, new to him. ‘Oh. I did it in the bar. Washed up, some. Came back here. And passed out.’
    ‘Because of—that?’ She points. In the open shed, a pyramid of two-by-fours and chunks of cornice rears like an unsigned work of art.
    ‘The club? No, I knew its days were numbered. That’s what made it so special. Never dreamed it would go like this though. Or like with that poor woman, Margaret.’ His voice has deepened. It mustn’t be that he can’t act. He can’t stop.
    ‘No—I was celebrating,’ he says softly. ‘Because—I got a job.’
    When somebody comes out with that it’s like a lens lifting, if only for them. But over their shoulder you too see out of the dog-gray, into the light.
    Of course it’s a division too. She’s remembering how that is. When maybe you and the jobbie are on stools in the diner, side by side. When whoever’s behind the counter offers a coffee, and don’t offer you. So you scrounge an extra paper napkin, in reply. The steam that runs down a diner’s window on a winter morning, it’s not important to most. Coming in from the real outside, it’s like a hearth. Your nose weeps for joy.
    ‘A job, a job,’ Mungo gobbles. ‘Better look sharp.’ He lashed out an arm—as he always had when he gave you something—and dug in his puttees. ‘Here.’ A bottle of his fizz. Then bowing in embarrassment like always, he backed out the door. Only to stick his head in again, the mustache quivering. ‘Stop calling me Aussie if you please. I’m